For lawyers only

February 24, 2005

Was This Law-Student Weblogger Caught Stealing?

It probably seemed like a good idea to him at the time: pull complete articles from different news sources (but only the most interesting ones!); copy all of the text of the articles, including the headlines; and put them on his own blog, "Southwest Virginia News," just as if he'd done all the hard work himself!

That was the idea, anyway. But it wasn't long before he got a cease-and-desist letter from a newspaper called the Kingsport Times. His response, at least initially, was brave: "Currently," he wrote on his other weblog, "two great legal minds are looking into the issue. I guess if we don’t have a resolution by next week after I take the bar exam, I will dive into U.S. Copyright law too. Looks like a fun subject and I am anxious to learn all about it."

He's right: copyright is a fun subject. Too bad he didn't think to learn about it a little sooner. What's left of his infringing news site is here. There's a statement on the site promising to return soon with "all the same great features" in a "less-infringing manner."

Eh, a lot of highly-knowledgeable people are unclear on fair use and, to be fair, it is a fuzzy concept. I run a Charlottesville news blog, and I regularly excerpt several consecutive sentences, and nobody minds. Another popular Charlottesville news blog has reproduced hundreds (thousands) of entire articles from publications and, as best I know, nobody's ever complained.

Anyhow, I certainly can sympathize with both sides here, but it seems like a good solution has been arrived at and a lesson has been learned.